


I Get a Charge Outta You

by Saebrin



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2010-2011 Season, Apology Desserts, Career Ending Injuries, Chronic Pain, Danny's RL kids, Getting Together, M/M, Moving In Together, Philadelphia Flyers, Slow Burn, a bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 16:18:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9131980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saebrin/pseuds/Saebrin
Summary: When you’re far from home, sometimes home comes to you. And if it shows up with a tool kit, a heap of emotional baggage, and some epic ginger curls, all the better. (Wherein Danny is still Mr. Playoffs, and Claude is an electrician who used to live and breathe hockey.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alotofthingsdifferent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alotofthingsdifferent/gifts).



> alotofthingsdifferent, this seemed relevant to your interests, so have a treat! Happy holidays. :) 
> 
> **Warnings:** This work contains a fuckton of swearing, references to alcohol abuse and chronic pain, becoming lucid during surgery, and scenes/references about being outed. Also, several scenes mention or include Danny’s IRL kids and ex-wife, so if that’s an aspect you’re uncomfortable with, this story probably won’t work for you. I did make up an ex for Claude, though, because he wouldn’t have known Ryanne by this point, and also I would’ve felt weird about splitting them up, even in my odd little fictional world. 
> 
> AU set during the 2010-2011 season.

He took the call because Vinny was on break. Well, really, because Vinny was a lazy bastard fifteen minutes late coming _off_ of break.

Anyway, Claude ended up rolling through Haddonfield with the windows down, curls plastered to his scalp, sun baking him despite the breeze. Fuck August heat waves. Give him snow and sub-zeroes any day. Fuck Vinny, too, for taking the only van with working air conditioning. And _double_ fuck Abso-Lumens Electric for making their employees wear polo shirts; the collar wouldn’t stop itching against his sweaty neck.

The sun daggered into his eyes even behind his shades, like some sort of divine punishment for his I’ve-got-gills impression the night before. No more drinking on Sundays. He always thought there was no way to make Mondays more hellish, but nope, he’d found it.

GPS led him to a house with a gleaming black Range Rover and a hockey net in the driveway, and he steeled himself for a round of politely deflecting soccer-mom chitchat. (Or, if somebody upstairs really wanted to punish him today, soccer-mom come-ons—which, Christ, he was a certified electrician, not a pool boy. He didn’t need a sugar momma.)

He hopped out of the van, grabbed his tool kit, and trucked up the walkway. After ringing the bell, he fidgeted from foot to foot and scratched under his baseball cap, doing his best to wait patiently and not drown in an ocean of his own sweat.

A flurry of barking, then scrabbling paws, and finally the door opened. The owner had two small dogs by their collars, but as he tugged them back and straightened from his hunched pose, Claude’s mouth went dry. His brain stalled out like a manual transmission under careless hands.

Because that? Was Daniel fucking Brière.

Daniel Brière of the Philadelphia Flyers, of NHL fame, and of the poster on Claude’s childhood bedroom wall back when Claude still had a future in hockey. Back when Claude was still riding the high of his second season with the Olympiques, before Tony Face-like-a-Cockhead Wilkes rode him into the end boards and wrecked his knee.

Daniel fucking Brière smiled, polite and perfunctory. It helped lighten the purple shadows under Brière’s eyes, the tired slant of his mouth, but not the intimidation factor of coming face-to-face with a boyhood idol.

“Hi, Mr. Brière. I’m Claude with Abso-Lumens Electric. I’m here to check you out… Uh. Your wiring, I mean.”

 _Oh. Oh God_. That came out of his mouth. Fucking English. Fucking nerves. Fucking _Daniel Brière_ snorting out a laugh, as though Claude’s failure to keep weird, unintentional innuendo out of his conversations with customers was no big deal. This was horrifying.

Fortune smiled on him, though—sort of literally—and Brière just said, “Call me Danny,” his mouth softening and his eyes crinkling at the corners.

“Right. Danny. I’m sorry,” Claude blurted. His face felt warm, set alight by mortification. “Still working on my English.”

“Hey, it’s okay. It’s nice to hear that accent around here.” Brière—Danny—switched to Québécois. “Would you be more comfortable with French?”

“Yes! Thank God.” Where had his filter gone? The way of the dinosaurs, apparently. All his synapses had gone kaput at the worst possible moment, leaving him with pudding for brains.

“Come in,” Danny said. “My mother would scold me for keeping you on the doorstep.”

Claude followed him into the blessedly air-conditioned kitchen, then down the basement stairs as Danny kept talking. “The breaker box is down here. The kitchen and dining room lights have been cutting in and out since we flew in last night.” That explained the duffel bags and suitcases mountained at the foot of the stairs; they must’ve just gotten home from a summer in Canada.

“My youngest is convinced we’re haunted,” Danny continued, glancing back at him and smirking, “but I figured I’d keep the exorcism as Plan B.”

Claude let out a little barking laugh. “Good call. Holy water might stain the hardwood.”

He turned the power off and checked wires and connections for the next while, Danny wandering in and out from the kitchen occasionally, as if curious but trying to stay out of the way. With how spacey and hungover as Claude was, it took him longer than usual to find and repair the shorts. The scratched-CD “I’m in _Danny Brière’s house_ ” mind-fuck staticking up his mental faculties probably didn’t help.

And, in all honesty, those weren’t the only distractions…

He surreptitiously watched Danny climb the stairs during one of his in-and-out trips, and _mon dieu_ , that ass. Those _thighs_. Danny may have been thirty-something and firmly in dilf territory, but the guy’s physique screamed high-quality sex.

God, and here was Claude with his cheap wrap-arounds, sweat-stained pits, and unshaven face, looking as though he just came off a bender. Not far from the truth, but he didn’t need _clients_ knowing that.

One of the barking machines from earlier, a Boston terrier, snuffled around him briefly and then followed Danny up to the kitchen. The other, a roly-poly French bulldog, seemed happy to sprawl on the carpet and solicit the occasional belly rub or ruff scratch, making small contented huffs.

“Zoey,” Danny said with a sigh when he came downstairs again and saw her practically drooling on Claude’s shoes. “Sorry about her; I hope you don’t mind dogs.” He’d brought a bottle of Gatorade and an apology for not having any “more classy” beverages in the house. “It was that, a juice box, or whiskey,” he admitted.

“Nah, this is perfect.” Claude took a big swig, and chilled lemon-lime lit up his taste buds.

“So, what brought you to Philly?” Danny asked, and it seemed as though he was actually interested, not just being polite, so the question spurred a whole lot of unintentional honesty. _Really_ faulty filter today.

“My girlfriend, she got into UPenn. My own plans kind of fell through”— _crunch, grind, shock of agony through his knee, ice burning cold against his cheek—_ “so when she moved out here and got a place by the campus, I figured why not.” And what a fuck-up that’d been. He didn’t mention the rest, all the other things he was trying to run from, trying to forget about when he packed all his shit and drove down to Philly. The depression. The near-ceaseless pain, the daily PT, the feeling angry and achy and impotent. The drinking. The fear and concern on his family’s faces, bleeding through with frustration every time he acted crabby and combative and bristled at their offers of help.

The chorus from “[Flick of the Switch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWKcJwuZnzE)” interrupted Danny’s response, and Claude fumbled his vibrating phone out of his pocket.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Giroux?” She said it like _Gur-owks_. Jesus. “Hi, this is Lara with Goldenview Heights.”

“Oh, hi! My application, did you need—”

“Unfortunately, we’ve already accepted a tenant for the unit you expressed interest in. We’re sorry it didn’t work out. Please do apply again when we have future openings, though. You’re an ideal candidate.”

“Right, of course. Thanks for letting me know.” He said goodbye and ended the call, feeling strangely numb. Damn it, damn it, _damn it_. He ought to be grateful they even bothered to notify him, since callbacks seemed like a dead courtesy nowadays, but Christ. It’d been four shitty weeks of scouring the tristate area for an apartment that didn’t a) have roaches bigger than his pride—which, admittedly, had been taking a beating lately—or b) get snapped up before he could schedule a walk-through. The stress was starting to give him migraines.

Fucking Philly.

He must’ve looked pretty despondent, because Danny shot him an assessing glance and asked, “Everything okay?”

He puffed his cheeks, blowing out a breath. “Yeah. Yeah, just didn’t get the housing I applied for in Cherry Hill.”

“That’s a bit longer commute, isn’t it?”

“Hmm?”

“For your girlfriend.”

“Oh. _Oh!_ ” The penny dropped. “It’s just for me. We, uh, we broke up, so I’m looking for a new place.” Forcedly cheerful, he added, “But it’ll be a way shorter drive to work now, so I’ve got that going for me.”

 _Nice, Claude. Talk about what you’ve “got going” to a multimillionaire who’s on TV every week and could get leases at every place you’ve tried to rent_ collectively.

Was 1:30 too early to start drinking?

He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I should finish this up. I’m almost done, and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

Danny was nice about it. He didn’t pry, didn’t make Claude dig himself an even deeper ditch of embarrassment and self-recrimination. “Sure, sure. I’ll quit distracting you,” he said instead, smiling, and then he disappeared up the stairs, giving Claude one more mesmerizing glance at his ass in tight cargo shorts. Claude scratched under the collar of his shirt—ugh, what shitty fabric—and got back to work, doing his best to ignore the heat in his face and throat.

When he was done, he collected all his tools and trudged up to the kitchen. Danny, who apparently had bat ears, appeared from the living room as Claude cleared the top step. Danny smiled, and Claude just then noticed the scar on his jaw, the one divoting the skin near his chin. Good lord, the man even made old injuries seem attractive.

Danny nodded toward the kitchen island, where a baking pan sat uncovered on the counter. Brownies, it looked like.

“My housekeeper’s latest baking experiment. Help yourself,” he said, and, well, chocolate, so of course Claude did.

The brownies were precut, and pretty generously at that, so he didn’t feel bad about snagging a corner piece almost as big as his palm. Danny wandered in closer, his elbow brushing Claude’s side as he pried out a piece of his own, and so Claude was standing at the kitchen island, mouth full of half-gooey, half-crunchy heaven while he did his best not to savor the sense-memory of that arm touching his ribs, when the back door clattered open.

A miniature Danny barreled into the house, tracking dirt and grass from his bare feet. Two even smaller clones trailed in his wake. The tallest of the three came to an abrupt halt, gaze traveling from Danny to Claude.

 _Lord_ , Claude realized suddenly, _I must look ridiculous_. Cheeks pouched like a squirrel’s, sunglasses perched at a douchey angle on top of his snapback…

“Hello,” he said, in French, and they all echoed him with reflexive politeness.

Then the tallest glanced between Claude and Danny, raised an eyebrow, and smirked. “You’re the rebound, huh?”

“Caelan!” Danny snapped, Dad Voice™ at full force.

“What?” the boy—Caelan, apparently—shot back defensively. “Mom said there’d be one, and come on, like he’s not your type. His _hat’s_ on _backwards_. And he’s _French_.”

Danny flushed, his expression turning pinched and pained. “We talked about this. You know better than to say things like that in front of people.”

“Who’s gonna hear, Dad? Your boyfriend?” Christ, this kid knew how to lay on the sarcasm. “Pretty sure he already knows.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Danny said through gritted teeth.

Realization dawned on Caelan’s face then, followed by—shit— _horror_. It was a sobering sight.

The kid backpedaled with a hasty, “I was joking! It was just a joke,” but Danny shook his head. After one glance, Caelan clamped his mouth shut, giving up on damage control. The cat was out of the bag, and there was no stuffing it back in.

Instead, Danny turned to Claude and pulled out his wallet. He fished out a wad of bills and handed them over. “Here’s your tip.”

Except, uh, no. Electricians didn’t get tips. Also, these were hundred-dollar bills. All of them. Why did he even have this much cash in his wallet? Didn’t rich people just use Amex black cards for everything?

Claude set the whole handful on the countertop. “Keep it.”

Danny’s face turned stricken, and shit, shit, he’d misunderstood.

“I don’t want it. You shouldn’t have to pay for common decency,” Claude clarified hastily.

“No, take it.”

“I don’t want the money.”

Danny shook his head again, his jaw set and nostrils flared bullishly. A new sort of wariness had entered his eyes, because money was the easy answer. Claude could almost _see_ the questions running through his head— _What else could this guy want? What else could I possibly have that he’d ask for?_

It was obvious he wouldn’t relax until he paid Claude enough to have a steel trap, so… “Another brownie.”

“What?”

“That’s my price. Another of these.” He waggled the half-eaten brownie in his hand, then took a deliberate bite. It was dense and fudgy, with a hint of sea salt. Hell yeah; totally a fair trade. “Better make it a corner piece. Those are my favorite.”

Danny went a step further and sent him out the door with _all_ the corner pieces wrapped up in tinfoil. It wasn’t until he was idling at the stop sign down the block that he realized he never learned the other two kids’ names.

 

* * *

 

That afternoon, Danny made all the obligatory phone calls—to his agent, to management, to his family and Sylvie—and then he sat back, braced for an impact that never came.

After living on a knife’s edge for several days, his gut tight and shoulders perpetually tense, he finally decided he could relax. Maybe it would just be a false alarm. (Or, worst case scenario, a dry run for when somebody _not_ Claude-the-hot-electrician deemed a bank account more important than Danny’s privacy.)

Why keep quiet, though? Was Claude just genuinely a decent human being? Maybe he was a fan. He’d obviously recognized Danny on sight.

Or maybe—and he barely let himself entertain the thought, though it creeped in at night alongside dreams of broad shoulders and thick ginger hair—just maybe Claude could relate.

And _that_ idea, once it had sneaked itself into a cramped little corner of his mind, wouldn’t go away.

He was at the counter with his paper wall calendar, ostensibly transferring all the important dates for the boys’ school and practice schedules onto it but in reality picturing how tight that shirt had been over Claude’s pecs (and how he wouldn’t mind the owner of said pecs coming around again—Caelan wasn’t wrong about him being Danny’s type, after all), when a ruckus started in the downstairs hallway.

“It’s mine, Carson! Give it back!”

The voice was too high-pitched to be Caelan’s, and Danny heaved a mental sigh. Not another argument over those damn Phillies caps. Getting all three boys the same color was a mistake; Carson and Cam had been waging war for days now, ever since one of the hats mysteriously vanished. Probably buried in the laundry hamper, if past mishaps were anything to judge by. In any case, none of the boys could agree on whose was whose.

A mocking laugh funneled down the hall, followed by some horrendous, pterodactyl-like screeching.

“Dad! Carson’s being a buttmunch!” Cam wailed, and a moment later there was a thump and then a _srrritchhh_ , clearly audible all the way in the kitchen. An ominous silence followed.

He hopped off the barstool with a sigh and went to verify that no one had died.

Nobody had. Well, nobody _human_. The thermostat, on the other hand, met a dark and violent fate, dangling from the plaster by its wire-guts. Courtesy of Carson, if his gape-mouthed expression, the way he clasped his smarting elbow, and Cam’s accusing pointer finger were evidence enough.

He should’ve been angry, should’ve spouted some parental lecture about roughhousing indoors, but what came out was, “Oh thank God.”

Honestly, it may have been the only time in history where the destructive nature of children was a blessing. They’d saved him the effort of finding something around the house to sabotage.

When he called Abso-Lumens, he waffled half a second before requesting Claude by name. He’d hate to have to break more stuff to schedule _another_ visit. Besides, wasn’t there some saying that twice was a coincidence, but three times was a pattern? Three times would make him seem like a weirdo. Or maybe just dangerously incompetent.

 

* * *

 

When Claude arrived the next day, though, he didn’t show any outward signs of thinking Danny was a failure who shouldn’t have custody of three fragile, impressionable human beings. (Or, God, an axe murderer luring the poor guy into his soundproofed basement. He hadn’t even considered that one until just now.)

He looked super casual as he climbed out of the van and marched up to the door—and no, Danny had absolutely _not_ been glued to the kitchen window for the last fifteen minutes, perking up every time he heard an engine. He just had a very pressing need to hand-wash all the cups instead of cramming them in the dishwasher the way he usually did…

 _Be cool, be cool._ He let Claude ring the bell, then counted to three before swinging the door open. Best not to look too eager.

Of course, Cam picked that moment to poke his head out from the living room, notice Claude, and announce, “Finally! Dad, come watch me beat this level—you don’t gotta wait by the window anymore, right?”

Seriously, his kids. He’d facepalm if that wouldn’t wreck what few vestiges of dignity remained.

… And then, naturally, Caelan picked the moment after _that_ to chime in with, “Yeah, come watch! You’ve been out there for _ages_!” Heat flared in his cheeks as he wondered, _Aren’t parents supposed to embarrass their kids, and not the other way around?_

 

* * *

 

It didn’t take Claude long to figure out which wires needed replacing, but he maybe worked a little slower than usual so he could listen to everybody nattering away in the living room, their French fast and full of almost-but-not-quite cussing. (And, hilariously, peppered with little mouth-percussion explodey sounds.)

He didn’t realize he had company until Danny cleared his throat _right behind him_.

G _ood God_ , Claude thought as he fit the repaired thermostat back into the wall, _this guy needs a little replica of the Liberty Bell, like the one on Vinny’s mom’s cat._ For someone who made his living smacking frozen rubber around at 140 kilometers per hour and playing human pinball, Danny was weirdly light-footed.

“Are you hungry?” Danny asked. “We’ve got lunch stuff.”

Wait. What? Was he trying to buy Claude off with food again? Granted, prior encounters had already proven the tactic effective, and breakfast was _eons_ ago… “I’m on the clock. You sure you wanna pay me to eat your food?”

Danny snorted. “Consider it a tip. A real one this time,” he said over the stampede-like sounds of three preteens entering the hall, seemingly drawn by the word “lunch.”

“Uh. I guess, if you’re sure?”

“Yeah, absolutely. I don’t cook, but there’s some takeout I can heat up…”

Claude caught one of the boys grimacing and making _abort, abort!_ hand motions behind Danny’s back, so he went out on a limb and offered, “Got stuff for grilled cheese? I could throw some together.”

There was a long pause, Danny’s ingrained manners obviously warring with his desire to eat something home-cooked and potentially palate-friendly, but then he nodded and busted out that sunshiney smile. “If you don’t mind.”

Behind him, the smallest mini-me fist pumped. The other two exchanged less-than-subtle grins.

Once Claude finished cleaning up his wire bits and jamming all his tools back into his kit, everybody migrated to the kitchen.

He opened up the fridge as Danny started dragging plates and pans and whatnot out of the cupboards, and huh. The kids’ reactions made a hundred percent more sense now. Aside from the alluded-to takeout in Styrofoam containers, the entire contents of the fridge were condiments, drinks, butter, a couple blocks of cheese, and an enormous mesh bag of oranges.

What was even the purpose of that many oranges? Preventing scurvy?

Whatever. He wasn’t getting free food—on the clock!—for being judgmental. He snagged the cheese and butter and knocked the door shut with his hip, then set to work.

A couple minutes later, as he waited for the stove burner to heat up, he acknowledged to himself that the situation was weird. But—and here was the _truly_ weird part—it didn’t feel that way. Fiddling with the spatula, he flashed back to lazy weekends with his ex, Marissa; he used to hover around the stove in his boxers, making them grilled cheeses, and then they’d eat on the couch with reruns for white noise, trading gooey kisses between bites.

Relaxed, comfortable, domestic.

This felt like that.

… Minus the kissing and the near-nakedness, obviously. There were _children_ around.

 

* * *

 

Danny watched Claude’s deft motions with the spatula. Watched how he didn’t hesitate to make himself at home, digging through the cupboards and drawers to find ingredients and utensils. Watched the way he replied in French to the kids’ jabbering—not just idle _mm-hmm_ s and _oh yeah_ s to pretend he was listening, but actual thought-out responses, even as he buttered bread and hacked slices from a block of sharp cheddar.

Zoey and Zora motored in to snatch up a scrap of fallen cheese, and Claude stooped to give them each an ear scratch before turning back to the stove.

Danny watched all this, and a crazy, insane, _reckless_ idea began to form.

It solidified slowly as they chugged milk and ate oozey, buttery, crispy grilled cheeses in the living room, all of them burning their mouths at least once. The boys waxed poetic about the food the whole time, as if Claude walked straight off of the Food Network and into their house.

Finally, they piled the empty plates by the sink and Danny walked Claude out to the van, where Claude, without even saying a word, promptly pounded the last nail into Danny’s common-sense coffin.

Because, see, the van? Claude’s bedroom must have exploded in it.

No joke. There was stuff crammed behind the driver’s seat and on the passenger side, not to mention both foot wells. Clothes, books, DVDs, a panini press and a basketball and … a shaving kit? Even a scuffed pair of hockey skates. There was no way he wasn’t halfway through a move.

“Did you have some luck apartment hunting, then?”

“... Not, uh. Not yet.” He followed Danny’s line of sight through the window into the hodgepodge, and his cheeks pinked up. He seemed to hunch inward, subconsciously making himself smaller. “God, I must look like I’m living in there. I’m not, I swear. I just didn’t wanna come home and find it all on the lawn. Leaving stuff in my car is like sticking up a sign saying ‘steal me,’ so I kinda just put everything in the work van.”

Danny made a noise to show he understood. “Been there. Well, not the actual ‘all my shit is on the front lawn’ thing, but the worrying it might end up there, yeah.” Divorces tended to go like that.

Claude relaxed visibly at his words. Tension Danny hadn’t even noticed melted out of his shoulders, and he crooked a smile that set something hot and achy alive in Danny’s stomach. Danny cleared his throat and switched the subject to the latest Phillies game.

That seemed to diffuse the last of the discomfort from Claude’s posture, and they small-talked for a couple more minutes before Claude’s cell phone chirped in his pocket. His mouth twisted with regret as he told Danny, “Gotta go work my magic. Thanks for lunch.”

 _Hah,_ you’re _thanking_ me _?_ Danny almost said, but Claude had his phone in hand now, pecking out a response to his boss. The moment passed.

Later, though, after Claude had driven away, that little hamster wheel between Danny’s temples kicked into overdrive. Claude “I’m here to check you out” Giroux voluntarily cooked food for Danny’s kids, okay. Every time he spoke, his accent softened the always-there ache in Danny’s heart, the one that longed for Gatineau. He even had the holy trifecta of belongings, in Danny’s opinion: a conscience, a friendly nature, and, if that “don’t wanna ruin the hardwood” crack was anything to go by, a sense of humor.

Danny went to bed that night with maybes and what-ifs jackrabbiting around in his head. _Sleep on it_ , he told himself. _Get the boys’ opinions_. He wouldn’t be the only one affected by this crazy urge to cohabitate, after all.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, after he’d explained his idea, he had the boys take a vote. It was unanimous.

 

* * *

 

“... an absolute travesty, I’m tellin’ ya. What kind of nutjob puts mustard on a cheesesteak?” Vinny’s motormouth was going, going, going as they lounged in the break room on Tuesday. His words might’ve been a little … muffled … by his giant gobful of sandwich, but the outrage came through crystal clear. “And don’t get me started on ketchup people. They’re just sick.”

“Call for you, G,” their boss, Gemma, said cheerily, poking her head into the room. “Careful, okay? He might be a ketchup guy.”

“Ha ha,” Vinny said sarcastically, cramming an errant bit of steak back inside his hoagie roll.

She smirked at Vinny, then held out the cordless for their landline. Half the lettuce from Claude’s BLT (hold the tomato) dumped into his lap when he freed up a hand to accept it, but he ignored that and licked his greasy fingers real quick before cradling the phone against his ear.

“Hello?”

“Claude? Hi! Hello.” And oh, it was Danny. A little spike of panic shot through him. _Did I fuck up the thermostat? Is it snowing in Brière-ville? Or shit, worse, melting?_

Before his _own_ melt(down) could progress to critical, Danny added, “Sorry to bug you at work, but I wasn’t sure how else to get in touch.”

And that, at least, didn’t sound as if awful, awful things were happening because of a Giroux Special fuck-up. Whew.

“What can I do for you, Danny?”

“Um.” Weirdly, Danny sounded hesitant. “... Move in?”

Claude took a good long moment to process that and consider possible ways he might’ve misheard. Maybe Danny said _Move a bin_ , or _Moo fin,_ or even _A muffin_ (and shit, that last one took him on a little mental side-trip about the mechanics of how exactly you’d “do” a muffin—like, was he supposed to bake one? Stick his dick in one? What?).

Maybe he ought to clarify.

Danny beat him to it. “I’m sorry, that came out weird. I just meant that if you haven’t found a place yet, I have a spare room upstairs, and it would be totally rent-free. Not that I think you can’t afford rent,” he said, backtracking hastily. “It’s just, the kids and dogs seem to really like you, and it would be nice to have some adult company. Plus I go on road trips a lot, but Zoey and Zora hate staying at the boarding kennel, and if somebody was home, I could just skip that whole headache…”

Dear lord, he could never hope to compete with that level of rambling. He’d broken Danny Brière.

And then his brain caught up with the last few sentences, and he said, “Wait, wait,” putting the brakes on because _adult company_. “This isn’t a sex thing, is it?”

Across the table, Vinny choked on his sub.

Claude ignored the coughing and focused on his own rising discomfort, because Danny was hot and friendly and generous, yeah, but Claude was never gonna be some rich guy’s plaything or piece on the side. His pride couldn’t handle it. (Although, hundred-percent honesty, if he had to pick a sugar daddy, Danny would top the list with ease. Heh, top.)

Thankfully, Danny nipped his impending freak-out in the bud with a quick, vehement response. “Oh my God, no! Just roommates, I swear. And the occasional dog-sitting.” He sounded legitimately shocked, voice pitching higher, so he probably wasn’t bullshitting. Diving aside, hockey players weren’t known for their acting chops.

Because one panic fest wasn’t enough, a second possibility hit Claude then. What if wasn’t just about looking after the dogs? What if Danny was sick of slogging along on old takeout and microwavable junk, and he was under the impression that Claude was, like, a future Master Chef because he could melt cheddar between slices of bread?

He was _not_ cut out for Martha Stewarting, okay? He couldn’t even color match!

“You realize I’m not much of a cook, right? Because I make a mean grilled cheese, but that’s kind of false advertising for the rest of my skill set.” His mother taught him and his sister the basics before they moved out, but rotating the same half-dozen recipes got old quick, and he’d only picked up five or six more things he could cook reliably. Impressive? Not hardly.

Thankfully, Danny snorted, making it known that he was not, in fact, looking for a personal chef. “I’d still be asking if you were worse at it than _me_.” There was a little pause for emphasis, as though that said something significant. Thinking back to the contents of the Brières’ fridge, Claude figured it probably did.

“Look,” Danny continued, “why don’t I give you my number, and you can text or call if you decide you want the spare room? No pressure.”

“Yeah, okay.” That sounded a little less like he was in the final round of Jeopardy with the clock ticking down, seconds away from a decision that would alter the course of his life. Danny dictated a string of numbers for him, and he typed them into his cell phone’s “add new contact” box with his thumb.

“I’ll think on it,” Claude told him. He wasn’t gonna rush into anything. He wasn’t.

… Hell, who was he trying to kid. Even if it _did_ turn out to be a weird sex thing, it’d be a step up from the awkward no-man’s-land that his and Marissa’s common spaces had devolved into. Sharing a one-bedroom with your ex was _super bad_ for your blood pressure and mental health, go figure.

Less than five minutes after they’d said their polite goodbyes and hung up, he sent a text, valiantly ignoring the way Vinny craned his neck to read it upside down.

_if the offer’s still open, yes_

 

* * *

 

He moved in that Saturday.

The whole thing was surprisingly anticlimactic. Nothing fragile got dropped or squished, and even maneuvering all his accumulated junk up the stairs while dodging dogs underfoot went pretty smoothly. Sure, the boys were wound, but they lost interest halfway through and disappeared into the backyard to throw tennis balls for Zoey and Zora, which was a “two birds with one stone” kind of reprieve. He and Danny hauled the last few boxes up in relative peace, and Danny didn’t even make fun of his sixty-percent-plaid wardrobe. (But, really, glass houses, so his silence was probably out of self-preservation.)

In all, Claude had zip, zero, nada complaints about the whole process.

Not until he abandoned the last box next to the closet and flopped down on the mattress, that is. “Danny, holy shit. This thing is uncomfortable. Was it half off at Torture-Devices-R-Us?”

Danny snorted, setting a box labeled “Sock Drawer” on top of the dresser. “Oh come on. It can’t be that bad.”

“You think so, huh?” He lifted an eyebrow in challenge.

Danny, bless his irrationally competitive little soul, huffed and dropped down on the other side of the bed to prove him wrong. He opened his mouth, presumably to issue a rebuttal, and … yeah, nope.

“You might have a point.”

Now he was gonna have to squeeze mattress shopping into his schedule. Joy.

 

* * *

 

The days passed, and as the awkward, houseguest-ish vibe surrounding Claude faded, everybody—him included—transitioned from overly polite to assholish-but-fond. Manners gave way to open-mouthed chewing, lounging in holey, stained only-around-the-house clothes, and a certain repeat culprit (cough, Caelan) putting empty milk and juice bottles back in the fridge. Underneath a thin veneer of proper behavior, they were all heathens; might as well let it show in the comfort of their own home.

He struck up an instant friendship with the housekeeper, Jeannette, too, although that was infinitely more civilized. She was half-Québécoise on her father’s side and loved to chat and bring by experimental recipes—those brownies from his first visit, it turned out, were just one of her many projects.

“I’d love to open a bakery someday,” she confessed to him as she set the latest pan of mouthgasm-inducing goodies on the kitchen island. “Maybe after I scrape together a down payment.” Claude made a mental note to mention that to Danny.

In the meantime, she was always looking for fresh guinea pigs, so whenever their paths crossed coming and going, he laid out a detailed report of his taste buds’ reactions to her latest lemon bars, or turnovers, or pumpkin cream-cheese rolls. The only negative feedback he ever gave was for pecan-raisin oatmeal cookie week, which he missed entirely because the boys had emptied out the tin, crumbs and all, by the time he got home from work.

Work, by the way, was currently shitty.

Abso-Lumens Electric’s newest project was a behemoth of a wiring task, a wannabe McMansion owned by the Dixon family. They had a slight nose-in-the-air vibe, Mr. and Mrs. Dixon. (And yes, they liked to be called “Mr.” and “Mrs.,” because it’d look bad in front of the neighbors if they were on a first-name basis with their blue-collar, jeans-wearing, cuss-spewing contractors.)

Mrs. Dixon usually assaulted Claude in olfactory fashion, the smell of tobacco hovering around her, only half-covered by expensive, cloying floral perfume.

Mr. Dixon, on the other hand, waged more conscious, deliberate acts of war by being _extremely fucking indecisive, Jesus Christ on a nut-busting pogo stick._ The man couldn’t stick with a plan to save his life, and he’d had plenty of folks on the project grinding their teeth to keep from saying, “Just one more little tweak, eh? I’ll show _you_ a little tweak. A tad farther and we could have your head _all_ the way up your ass, instead of just three-quarters.”

Maybe not those exact words, but the sentiment held. Anyway, Claude soldiered through.

On the _other_ work front, Danny’s schedule was starting to go haywire. First there was training camp, and then the first preseason game passed, followed by the second and third. Suddenly the first preseason road trip was looming, and the kids vanished off to their week at Sylvie’s while Claude geared up for a weekend alone, just him and Zoey and Zora.

Three hours after Danny’s plane took off, he admitted to himself that the house felt empty. Too quiet, too echoey. He snagged Danny’s latest book off the end table—some psychological thriller with stylized blood spatter on the cover—and tried reading for a bit, but the silence in the house had him twitchy and restless.

Eventually he grabbed the dogs’ leashes and herded them outside for a walk. The whole day was like that, suffocatingly quiet and still. It was Saturday and Danny was due back on Monday, but suddenly that two-day span felt awfully large.

After sleeping like shit and then wiggling feeling back into his toes the next morning—Zoey had conked out draped over his calf—he came downstairs and sprawled on the couch in his boxers. He usually tried to keep everything below the waist semi-decent when the kids were around, but in this big, echoey, empty house, he could watch TV in his threadbare boxers and eat waffles with his bare hands, and there was nobody around to see it.

At first, at least.

Fifteen minutes into _Cops_ , the front door rattled, and in walked a woman he’d never seen before, tall and dark-haired.

 _Shit._ Shit, were they being robbed?

A gust of air followed her through the door, making his nipples perk up into stiff peaks. The sudden, irrational urge hit that he should cover them with his hands, which was probably—okay, definitely—a weird thing to worry about during a burglary.

(Double shit. First time he was home alone for more than a few hours, and the place got ransacked? Danny was totally gonna think he planned it.)

Potentially-A-Robber gave him a long up-and-down glance, her gaze sharp, assessing.

“So you’re the roommate, huh?” Weirdly, she sounded amused.

“Yeah, uh.” Would a robber know something like that? They usually cased houses before they broke in, didn’t they? Damn it, it was too hard to think when the nipple thing was distracting him. He set the last of the waffle on some papers on the coffee table, leaving _severe_ syrup smears, and raised both hands to cover his chest. “Sorry, I didn’t catch a name?”

“I’m Sylvie. Danny’s ex.”

 _Oh thank God_. Strolling on in like that must have meant she had a key, which meant she was allowed to be here, which meant he was _not_ responsible for anything lost, stolen, and/or broken. Hallelujah.

“Right, okay. I’m Claude, Claude Giroux. Did you need something?”

“Just Caelan’s Social Studies paper. Have you seen it around anywhere? He swears it’s here and not at school, but he forgot to bring it over in the first place, so I’m not putting a ton of stock in that.”

“It’s right—”

Claude looked down at the coffee table, where Caelan’s homework folder was buried under the remote and half a waffle, slowly absorbing several globs of syrup.

“—here.”

He grabbed the folder, wiped the wet spot on the side of his boxers (not that it helped a ton), and put on his most charming smile as he handed the poor thing over. At least it was in one piece.

Miraculously, she accepted the folder without even pulling a face. Maybe having three sons had conditioned her into thinking food-based messes—or, let’s be honest, messes in general—weren’t a huge deal.

“Thanks a bunch. It was nice meeting you,” she said. She offered her hand, then turned to go after he shook it.

At the door, she paused with her back still to him.

“Hey, Giroux? One last thing. You seem like an all right guy, but I’m a parent, and ‘all right’ means nothing when it comes to the safety of my kids. I don’t give a shit whether Danny trusts you. If I ever think your presence here is a bad influence on them, or if I hear you’ve mistreated them in any way, I’ll make sure you’re out on your ass inside of an hour. We clear?”

Claude nodded even though she couldn’t see it. “Crystal.”

“I’m glad. Have a nice day now, okay? And maybe get a new waffle. That one’s got dog hair on it.”

The door shut behind her with a sharp _click_.

 

* * *

 

The first couple weeks of the regular season plowed Danny over like a freight train, despite all his summer conditioning. As he came home every day, high on the promise of a fresh shot at the Cup— _this year, this year, want it this year, please_ —but physically and mentally wrung out, he slowly came to a realization.

Claude was a goddamned godsend.

No, really. On nights they couldn’t stomach any more takeout, Claude cooked one of the dozen or so dishes in his repertoire. He always let Zoey and Zora out for their morning piss, and he even put on a pot of coffee before Danny got up. His room was a disaster, but whatever, there was such a thing as too perfect.

Best of all, though? Claude left _before Danny_ in the mornings. The boys had been back in class for almost two months now, and Claude had slipped into the drop-off and pick-up rotations as if he were always there, taking over morning chauffeur duties without complaint. The extra half hour of sleep Danny got was sheer nirvana.

Case in point, October 23rd, as he sat at the kitchen island, 7:37 a.m. or thereabouts (the microwave clock was _always_ wrong):

Claude was halfway out the door, herding the kids to the car so he could drop them off on his way to work. He looked around, seeming frazzled as he scrubbed a hand through his still-wet hair, and Danny took pity, releasing his mug of glorious, steaming coffee long enough to toss him the car keys.

Claude caught them easily. Maybe his knee couldn’t hack it anymore, but his reflexes were still sharp. “Thanks,” he said with a sigh, knuckling at one of his eyes.

“You seem tired.”

“Too many long days. The Dixons pushed up the deadline on their wiring, some bullshit about scheduling conflicts with the heating contractor”—he rolled his eyes—“and now we’ve got three less days than we were supposed to. It’s enough to drive a man to drink.” A weird shadow crossed Claude’s face for a moment.

Danny sat up straighter, concern flowing through him. “You okay?”

Claude hesitated. “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Just ... realized I haven’t told you something yet.”

And okay, right that second probably wasn’t the best time for a prolonged conversation, but the look in Claude’s eyes, the now-rare hesitance and discomfort returning to his body language... Those were pretty big “we need to talk!” flags. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Not now, anyways. But, uh, I used to … have a problem. With alcohol. I’ve got it under control now though, I swear.”

Oh. _Oh._

“I was pretty low for a while, after some shit that happened with my knee. Drinking too much, thinking it was the end of the fucking world. Y’know, like my life was over before I even hit twenty, ’cause I was never gonna play hockey again. I don’t know if you know this”—he fiddled with the keys, eyes downcast—“but I used to be pretty decent. Had a couple real good seasons with the Olympiques, and there was some talk I was gonna get drafted.”

“Jesus.” What could he say to that, to the knowledge that what he did and loved had been stolen from someone else? “I’m sorry.”

“Claude, c’mon! We’re gonna be late!” Carson hollered from the front door.

“Shi—oot. I’ll see you later, Danny,” Claude hissed, and he headed for the door at a jog.

As the car started up outside, Danny’s thoughts drifted from Claude’s morning-rough voice to how he looked fresh out of his morning shower. How Claude just admitted to having all kinds of baggage, and how that didn’t change the way Danny felt about him one bit.

How this warmth swelling up inside him was bright and hopeful, yet utterly terrifying.

 

* * *

 

Time rolled on. Halloween, American Thanksgiving, school and work and an overabundance (if that was possible) of hockey—practices and games and tournaments for the boys, but only the first two for Danny.

They didn’t talk about the NHL too often. Danny knew it was a sore spot now, especially after Claude told him more about playing for the Olympiques, so he stuck mostly to innocuous details about practices and teammates and his schedule, and he called off the hounds when the kids were being too pushy about street hockey, ball hockey, knee hockey, really anything that ended with “-ockey”...

Claude watched his games, though. On TV, never in person. Wins, losses. Cellies and scrums. Passes and hits and high stickings. He made a blanket nest on the living room couch and tried not to resent Danny for having everything he dreamed of.

Well, almost everything.

The hockey, the money, the kids, yeah. But there were empty spots in the house, places where paintings obviously used to hang, furniture used to sit, and Danny had a whole goddamn kitchen of cookware he didn’t know how to use. Envy didn’t have a place here, not when Danny brought him into these empty spaces to _fill them_.

He didn’t want Danny thinking he was a moody little fucker with, like, jealousy issues, so he put on a happy face. At first, anyway. Every time he brought up Danny’s stats, or last night’s defensive implosion, or the way the Flyers steamrolled so-and-so, it felt a little more genuine, until it stopped being a mask and started being _him_.

 

* * *

 

The first Sunday of December, Danny and Claude stopped being roommates.

The boys were gone for a tournament, Sylvie driving them since Danny was playing both Saturday and Sunday, and Danny took advantage of that to run errands after the morning skate. When he got home, tracking snow through the door as he hauled grocery bags to the kitchen, he noticed how quiet it was. Usually Claude had migrated to the couch by this point on a weekend, with a random channel on for background noise as he dozed or picked at a lazy breakfast.

He dumped the last of the bags on the kitchen island, toed off his shoes, and peered into the living room to satisfy his curiosity.

What he found was … uh … enlightening. In more ways than one.

Claude lay splayed on the couch in just pajama bottoms. That particular pair usually rode pretty low, his hip bones peeking above the band, but today they were fully exposed.

Because Claude was fully exposed, too.

Fabric shoved down around mid-thigh, bottom lip caught between his teeth, hand running languid, sleepy strokes down the length of his uncut cock, which was half-hard. It grew darker and thicker by the moment as he rolled his palm over the crown and rocked up into the motion. He had his head tilted back and his eyes closed, earbuds in both ears, playing God knows what. Were jerk-off playlists a thing?

“Fuck,” Danny said, and that must have been close enough, loud enough to register even when the front door and the car outside didn’t, because Claude’s eyes snapped open like he’d been shot.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Claude shoved himself upright and scrambled to tug up his pants, then yanked out his earbuds with what had to be painful force. “What are you doing here? You have morning skate!”

“ _Had_. I’ve been and gone, Claude.”

“Oh. Oh, fuck.” Claude drew his knees up toward his chest, cherry-faced and looking miserable. He fisted a hand in his curls, half-hiding behind the width of his palm.

“Do you do this a lot?” he found himself asking, because Christ, as hot as it was, he didn’t need any of the kids walking in on that.

“No! No, of course not. Just, I was the only one home.” He glanced at the nearest window, at the bright midmorning light streaming through. “Lost track of time.”

Danny already knew there was no clock in the living room, so he resisted the impulse to look for one. That wasn’t important right now, anyway. What was, was how he should react to catching his roommate in flagrante delicto—the way a normal person would, or the way he wanted to?

Because that second one, well, he could maybe be okay with it now. When they first met, they’d have been each other’s rebounds. They’d have been something too rushed for gun-shy guys fresh out of relationships that’d gone the way of the _Titanic._ Now, though, they could be something different.

They’d had an elephant hogging the room since they first met, right, this sexual attraction that hovered in the background of every touch, every smile, every conversation. _“This isn’t a sex thing, is it?”_ he remembered Claude asking back in August. It felt like ages ago, now that he had this man in his life. Lighting up his life.

It hadn’t been a sex thing then, and it still wasn’t now. Not _just_ that, anyway. Not after all those weeks of slowly twining their lives together, of learning how they took their eggs in the morning (Claude scrambled, Danny sunny-side up) and who was the earlier riser (Claude) and which of them had to kill the spiders around the house (Danny).

 _If you want good things, you have to work for them_ , he thought, and took the plunge.

“You, uh. You didn’t have to stop. Not on my account.”

A long silence sat between them, the air stilling, seeming to grow thinner and thinner like stretched taffy.

Then, finally, Claude angled his head, the motion oddly doglike. “We’re doing this, eh?” As good as admitting that he’d noticed it, too, that weight to every interaction, that spark they had.

Danny licked his lips, let out a breath more hum than sigh, and thought, _Fuck it_. “Yeah. Yeah, we are.”

So they did. Danny rounded the couch and leaned down as Claude surged up, and they met for a kiss, one that burned, both from the passion and the winter-dry lips. Because Claude was fire and Danny was exactly the right tinder, they escalated into trading hand jobs on the floor by the couch, thoroughly rug-burning their elbows and asses, and eventually spilling against each other’s bellies.

Afterward, as he licked Danny’s cum from the webbing of his own fingers, Claude said, “Next time, you should fuck me.”

Danny sucked in a shaky breath. “Yeah. Okay.” _And the time after that, when I don’t have a game_ , he thought but didn’t say yet, _you should fuck_ me.

When he stood, he accidentally put down a hand for balance and smeared cum on the carpet. (Zora wandered in a few minutes after they’d cleaned up, and she beelined for that spot and started sniffing. It was equal parts disgusting and hilarious.)

Still riding their respective postcoital highs, they unpacked the groceries and walked the dogs and then tumbled back into bed—one bed—to nap for the afternoon, curled together under the comforter with Danny’s back pressed to Claude’s chest.

And when Danny went to play that night, he potted the winning goal and was named first star of the game. December 5th put him on top of the fucking _world_.

So yeah, they’d stopped being roommates, housemates, whatever you wanted to call it. Roommates didn’t kiss and rut and clutch hair and hips, panting into open mouths and murmuring the filthiest French in Philly.

Where one thing ended, another began; death begat new growth, yada yada. Point was, they were something more now. Not all change was bad.

 

* * *

 

With the kids at Sylvie’s for the week, they got two days of honeymooning in the master bedroom before the next road trip. Danny packed his bag early and left it by the front door, because the team was flying out to Toronto after that evening’s game against the Sharks, and then he curled up in his darkened bedroom to nap.

The alarm went off midafternoon, and Danny tromped downstairs, still flattening his bedhead, just in time to see Claude zipping up the end pocket of his duffel. He looked strangely guilty, which Danny filed away to investigate later, when he wasn’t hungry and groggy.

 _Later_ , it turned out, wasn’t until he’d settled into his hotel room after the game—a shootout loss—and the following flight.

While his road roomie was down the hall getting ice, he stripped out of his suit and, on impulse, checked the end pocket of his bag. Inside was a wad of crumpled fabric, and when he shook it out, held it up to the lamplight, it was one of Claude’s old T-shirts—dark gray, worn translucent and soft from too many washings. The cracked text announced that _Electricians Do It in the Dark_. Holding the material up to his face, he gave it a sniff. Smelled dog hair and Claude’s cologne and that new detergent they’d started using because the old one was making Cam sneeze.

He wore the shirt to bed, and the next night he scored three points against the Leafs.

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t all pretty, of course.

After a five-nothing nightmare of a game against the Panthers a couple weeks later, Danny found himself curling up on the couch after the boys had gone to bed. He had an ice pack pressed against his side, although it wasn’t doing a ton of good, and he had to sit awkwardly, hunching to keep the weight off his throbbing hip. It was a deep, persistent ache, and the skin had already purpled up, edging toward black in spots.

Claude wandered into the living room then, shirtless and barefoot, in just a pair of basketball shorts. His hair was wet, dripping on the towel draped ’round his shoulders like a fur stole, and he was clutching a beer.

“Sitting like that’s just gonna make your hip _and_ your back hurt, y’know,” he said, reaching down to scratch at one of his knees. The bad knee—Danny could see the surgery scars from here, flushed red and more prominent than usual. It still hurt sometimes, he knew. It was probably aching like a bitch right then.

“What do you suggest?” Danny asked through a grimace.

“You gotta find something to distract yourself so you won’t focus on the pain.”

“Yeah, you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” he said sarcastically, nodding toward the beer Claude was holding. Then he sighed. That was a low blow, taking a jab at secrets Claude told him in confidence. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

Claude set his jaw and shook his head, though, fisting his hand white-knuckled on his towel.

“No, you meant exactly what you said. You don’t wanna take advice from some nobody who likes to self-medicate with alcohol.” His voice came out tight and clipped. “You have a bad day, you take it out on the weights or the bike, not on me.” He smacked the beer down on the table. “Here. I brought this for you.”

As if he didn’t feel shitty enough already. “I’m sorry, Claude. I didn’t mean—”

“No, you know what? I’m fresh out of give-a-fuck. I’ll see you in the morning.” And he turned and limped out of the room, using a hand on the back of the couch for support.

Fuck.

 

* * *

 

Danny made a phone call.

When he got home from practice the next day, a Pyrex dish of brownies was sitting on the island, next to a tube of luridly orange frosting.

_Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jeannette._

 

* * *

 

Claude checked his phone just after lunch, and he found _(1) new message from tiny monster <3_.

When he opened it, a picture of those glorious, glorious sea-salt brownies Jeannette liked to make filled his screen, along with a painstakingly frosted message:

_Sorry for being a jerk_

There was an honest-to-God heart drawn under it, too. Wow, this fucking guy. Seriously. Grinning wide enough that Gemma probably thought he was having a mental break, he texted back:

_I'm sorry too_

 

* * *

 

“How’s your knee?” Danny asked that night, shuffling closer in bed.

“Sore.”

That was an understatement. It’d been hurting like hell for days, flared up from the cold. He was sure it showed in his posture, in the ginger way he got up from chairs and the slowness of his stride, but he couldn’t help it. At times like this, he avoided putting weight on it as much as possible; those sense memories from _before_ hovered too close to the surface, and conditioned responses from the early rehab sessions ruled him. Body weight + joint stress + pushing too hard = puking levels of pain, so _don’t fucking walk on it_.

Aside from the memory of the hit itself, the part that stuck out most in his mind was the surgery. (The first one, not the second. Or the third.) The anesthesiologist underestimated how much knock-out juice he needed—that redhead gene at work, of course, making him extra resistant—and they didn’t quite get everything finished before he started to surface. He still thought about it occasionally, that murky, half-lucid awareness of excruciating pain before they realized what was happening and put him out again.

An involuntary shiver ran through him. Warm hands touched his arm, his wrist, and then there was a flurry of motion beside him as Danny crawled out from under the blankets.

Hovering above Claude in the muted light of the bedside lamp, Danny rucked up the edge of the comforter and curled careful fingers around Claude’s knee joint. Then he started to massage it. He pressed deep in the right places and skirted the damage in others, and soon Claude was a puddle of relaxation on the bed, feeling the tension lines ease away from his forehead and eyes as those multimillion-dollar fingers worked their magic.

As apologies went, this one was pretty decent. He knew who helped with the first half of it, too...

Leaning back against his pillow a little more, Claude started with, “So, Christmas? I had this idea for Jeannette...”

 

* * *

 

Danny’s phone went off during his post-practice locker room interview, and he didn’t think much of it at first. He could hear it ringing, but hell, it could go to voicemail. He’d be done in a few minutes.

Behind him, though, Hartsy apparently had other ideas. He shuffled over to Danny’s stall and checked the caller ID. “Hey, Danny B, it’s your new roomie. Want me to take this for you? I’m gonna take this for you.”

And Danny had to bite back a cuss word on camera, because Hartsy was putting the phone up to his ear, and he should’ve expected this to happen sooner or later, but to be truthful, he hadn’t.

“Hello? Hey, hi. Yeah, Danny’s a little busy right now. Can I take a message? ... Uh-huh. Yep. Sure thing, dude. I’ll let him know.”

Hartsy hung up, looking thoroughly amused.

“Your Frenchie dreamboat is off early today. He’s gonna pick you up after work so you guys can watch the kids practice.” He pretended to swoon. “Ah, domestic bliss.”

“Fuck off, Hartsy,” he mouthed but didn’t dare say aloud on camera. The reporter must have caught it, though, because she stifled a laugh and quickly turned away. _Just be thankful she took it all as a joke_ , he told himself. And really, there was no reason for her not to. Hartnell was a good guy, a good teammate; if he’d honestly thought he might out Danny, he’d never have said a word.

After the interview wrapped up, Danny considered calling Claude back to detail all the flaws with his plan—first and foremost that Danny had his own vehicle, and it was currently sitting in the parking lot—but then he decided it wasn’t worth the argument. Besides, it was Friday. As punishment for not thinking things through, Claude could drag himself out of bed on a weekend and drop Danny off at tomorrow’s morning skate.

Claude did end up picking him up, and they rolled through town at a pretty good clip, headed for the boys’ school.

At an intersection about ten minutes away from the Skate Zone, they passed a fire truck headed the other way, and whatever, like they didn’t see those all the time. Something about it set Claude off, though. He whispered a soft but vehement, “Fuck,” and surged through the intersection the second the light changed, way more abrupt than usual.

“ _Christ._ Claude, what are you doing?”

“The house,” was all Claude said, but a block later it started to make sense. They rounded a corner and pulled up along the curb, a few lots down from where a fire crew and multiple police cars occupied the lawn of a giant, still-smoldering two-story house.

Claude flexed his hands against the wheel, jaw tight and face the palest Danny had ever seen it.

“That’s the Dixons’ house.”

 

* * *

 

Seeing the fire was like touching a live wire. The jolt and surge inside him, the way his heart juddered and his lungs seized up.

He bailed out of the car, left it (and Danny) idling by the curb, and went to check with one of the police officers who’ve cordoned off the house. When he asked, the officer told him, “Nobody inside, thank God,” and turned back to unraveling caution tape.

They weren’t especially likable people, the Dixons—they were snoots and the hem-and-haw type—but they weren’t devil spawn either, so although he didn’t really give a shit about their ugly white carpeting, their boring chromatic paint, or their abstract, thousand-dollar “Cam could do this with both eyes closed” artwork, he was glad to hear they weren’t hurt.

Later, after he and Danny sat in on the boys’ practice and then brought them home, the whole thing done in preoccupied silence, he thought about the bottles in the cupboard above the toaster. They were hard liquor, the kind of thing nobody drank when it was Danny’s turn with the kids.

He grabbed a glass and stood by the counter for almost ten minutes. Then he put it away and pulled some leftover Pizza Hut breadsticks out of the fridge instead. Eating his feelings wasn’t the best solution either, but it sure beat the other vice.

He’d gone down this road once already, see, and it almost wrecked him in ways the bum knee hadn’t, in ways the break-up with Marissa hadn’t. _Gotta be stronger now_ , he told himself. Gotta keep his head on straight, with three kids in the house and people depending on him. He left the kitchen, Zora padding along behind him and hoping for crumbs, and when he cuddled up to Danny in bed, Danny set a hot palm against his head and stroked his hair.

After Danny fell asleep, he turned the situation over and over in his mind, even as he tried to steer his focus toward Danny’s arm heavy across his ribs, toward the rhythmic breaths puffing against his throat.

_Did I fuck something up? Did I leave something ungrounded? What about the outlets? The breaker?_

He wasn’t the only one working on the wiring, but he’d done the lion’s share of it, and there was a lot of potential for fuck-ups in a five-bedroom, three-bath house with far, far too many appliances.

It haunted him the rest of the week, sitting bulky and loudmouthed in the backseat of his brain as he went through each day, as he dropped the kids off at school and took calls at work and watched Danny light the lamp on TV: _Did I cause this?_

 

* * *

 

Christmas was a pretty quiet affair, with the kids at Sylvie’s for actual Christmas Day. It left an ache in Danny’s stomach, but they compromised by letting the boys open all their Danny-and/or-Claude gifts on Christmas Eve instead. Then he and Claude slept in the next morning and opened their own gifts—a new jacket for Danny and a “fucking _Rolex_ ” for Claude (Claude’s words)—once they finally dragged their asses out of bed. Afterward, they picked at leftover Chinese for breakfast, because let’s be real—neither of them wanted to cook.

Halfway through a mouthful of sesame chicken, Claude had to get up and answer the house phone. He listened a moment and then put it on speaker, which, holy shit—was he trying to make Danny go deaf?

The long, ear-piercing shriek finally died down, and Jeannette’s voice filtered over the line, thick and teary. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! You boys are angels in hideous plaid, doing God’s work.” She laughed. “I can’t believe this. The _entire down payment._ ”

Claude shot him a grin, the first genuine happiness Danny had seen all week, and told her, “It was our pleasure.”

 

* * *

 

They got a call from Gemma a few days later, as Claude and he ran midmorning errands—the post office, the grocery store, the gas station, nothing exciting.

Not arson, the investigators had decided. Not faulty wiring, either. The point of origin was a cigarette butt on the bathroom windowsill—the curtains caught first, then the towel rack, and that’s all she wrote.

The look on Claude’s face was pure relief, as if a lightness had seized his entire body, as if Atlas had strolled up and offered to take that elephantine weight, the entire goddamn world, off his shoulders.

Nobody had owned up to being the sneaky bathroom smoker, but, well ... Danny couldn’t help thinking back to a comment Claude made once, about Mrs. Dixon’s smell.

 

* * *

 

Before long, it was time to ring in the New Year.

There was gonna be a team party at Richie’s place, apparently, with lots of booze and catered food and raring-to-meet-him hockey players. In early evening, as the time to leave for said party creeped nearer, Danny crowded up to Claude at the en suite bathroom’s counter, intent on reeling him in with pretty words and prettier smiles.

“You should come,” he said, splaying his fingers against the small of Claude’s bare back.

Claude hesitated, stilling the razor against his cheekful of shaving cream and his thick orange mountain-man stubble. He’d been thinking about hitting a bar with some people from work, Vinny and Gemma and a handful of others, but apparently Danny was about to derail those plans.

“Really, all the guys wanna get to know you,” Danny wheedled.

“I already talked to some of them,” he said.

His protest had no force, though, and Danny just smirked. “I mean as more than two seconds on the phone, Clo. C’mon, I’ll rub your back when we get home,” he offered, resorting to bribery now. “Besides, I need someone to kiss at midnight.”

“Fine.” Claude let out his best longsuffering sigh, then added an eye roll for good measure.

“Thanks, cher.” Danny pecked him on the mouth and added cheekily, “Knew you couldn’t resist my charms.”

He saved the tiny uptick of his lips for after Danny turned and started to walk away, because Christ, it was true. The guy didn’t need any more ammunition; he already had the mind and the laugh and the body, which were all dangerous enough. (Lord, the body. He admired it again as Danny slipped out of the bathroom. He looked hella fine in a dark button-up and tight jeans, and he was like a crowbar, see. Slim but strong—give him a little leverage and the right angle, and he’d outperform things a lot bigger, broader, meaner.)

Claude finished getting ready in a hurry, and they threw their coats on, jingling keys and pocketing wallets and twining hands. Danny smiled at him, that sweet smile that stretched the scar on his chin.

How’d he get this lucky, huh? He thought on it sometimes, on all the tiny details that had to go wrong or right or maybe just _go_ in the universe to have them both in the here and now.

Claude’s family back in Ottawa, they’d told him he’d regret moving out of the city—hell, out of the _country_ —for a girl. They’d looked at Marissa—Ivy League, sweet but very, very ambitious Marissa—and been terrified he’d leave with her and be back inside of a year, smarting and heartbroken and neck-deep down the rabbit hole of alcoholism, which he’d been dipping a toe into at the time. His sister, Izzy, red-faced and angry and so, so worried for him, had said, “I love you, little brother, but this? This is a grade-A fuck-up.”

And maybe she was right at the time, he decided as he followed Danny out the door and the sweet, chilled, new-year-new-life-new-love air hit his face. But if following Marissa to Philly was a mistake, it was the best one he ever made.

 

_Finis_


End file.
